I took a tour of a volunteer organisations work with kids who´s families depend on scavenging in the massive garbage dump in Guatemala City ... Camino Seguro, aka safe pasage (http://www.safepassage.org/).
Families used to actually live in the massive dump (a good 5 Km square or so) in Guate city, until the combination of a tire fire and underground methane leaks resulted in a massive fire.
(The methane leak was apparently caused by chemical processes happening with all the weird waste they've buried there, and its strange to think of this man made tip having natural processes, like its a real ecosystem, although I suppose it is, even if its made of junk.)
Without anyone keeping check they have no way of knowing how many people died in the blaze. Since then theyve built a wall around it, and theoretically no children are allowed in. However, when the dump trucks (which come in a constant stream) drop off their loads, hundreds crowd round them looking for choice things to eat, use or sell.
Cam Seg pays for the childrens education, (as it´s not free in Guatemala), and provides a place for them to study, and help them with their homework, and compensates their family for the lack of income if one of their kid is no longer helping out, scavening in the dump, etc. They also have more extreme interventions for kids who are abused.
On the chicken bus into Guatemala City I chatted with our tour guide about the recent death of the founder of the organisation, and where it left the project.
I get the impression that the founder, some kind of vaguely hippyish woman from the US, was a micro manager, and an idealist. The guy doing our tour was trying to get more vocational kids of education started, like metal work, bakery, and things the kids might have a chance of being employed for in the near future.
A standard education is obviously vital, but from what I can tell Guatemala´s class system is alive and well, and the more Spanish you look, the richer you are, and the reverse if you have a native/Mayan appearance. I doubt that these kids, with their backgrounds, can walk into office jobs, no matter how qualified.
We saw their first site, a hothouse next to a recycling plant (how apt that the waste is recycled by both machines and the people next door). Its like a warehouse they've tried to make a nursery from, with kids up to about 3 years old.
People are taking pics of the kids, and I cant help but smirk at the swedish guy who brought a swish camera is swamped by kids putting their fingers all over it, pushing the buttons, trying to see their own pictures. He tried to be cool about it, but he so clearly wasn't.
Theyre all so eager to be the centre of attention they push each other out the way, or put their hands in front of shots of their friends. I havent spent enough time with groups of kids to be sure, but I guess this is pretty normnal, and 3 year olds are selfish gits the world round, no matter how rich or poor.
On our way to the newer premsises we get more background, about how the dump has been expanding over the years, again like a natural phenomenon, like a crevice or fault line, which has pushed people into the surropunding areas. There are literally houses of nothing but corrogated iron, whole streets of tinky shacks like that. The man who owns the surrounding property can do nothing about it, and for that reason he gave Cam Seg a 20 year lease of the property for free. The first thing they had to do was build a wall, to stop people putting their shacks there the next time the borders of the dump changed.
When you open the metal security door to the courty yard, its literally like being transported. There's grass and plants and a few bright orange butter flies fluttering about, and clean classrooms as good as any primary school in England, and all these kids up to about 5 or 6 are playing and some are having their hair cut. I think I'd stay here all day and never go home, given the choice.
As we walked to the next site, through cramped streets with teenagers dismantling bits of car parts and other bits of machinery I couldnt recognise, and broken down rusted cars and garbage everywhere, we passed a makeshift basketball hoop, with a few guys playing half-court in the road, and reggaton blaring from somewhere, and for a second we could have been in almost any city in the world.
The final site we visit is for older kids going to proper schools already, with more formalised learning and curiculums. Theres a class going on in the grass area here, where the kids illiterate family members are given Spanish lessons, including a granny of about 60 years old.
They even have an IT room, where the kids can apparently earn Microsoft certification. In the past Ive scoffed at MS as they disguise market dominiation with charity, but I suppose Word and Excel and Powerpoint are possibly the most useful skills to have if you want an office job, and Gates is apparently the worlds bigggest philanthropist or whatever, so Ill cut them some slack.
On the way back for a bus, a man rounds a corner. I´ve gotten used to seeing people carrying rediculously heavy things on their back, often with the aid of a strap around their forehead, but this one still surpruised me: on his back was a coffin.
It looked like it might fall any minute, any I could imagine some corpse tumbling out.
We soon passed his destination: a coffin store. In the whole afternoon, these coffins were by far the most pristine and expensive items to be bought in the area.
It reminded me of a Paul Theroux comment, about the high quality of the cemetaries compared to the houses in Latin America in the 80s: The houses are for a few years at best, but the coffins are forever.
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